June 2010: HHS predicted “most” of 17 million people would have plans change

posted at 2:01 pm on October 29, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

This little tidbit comes to us via our old friend Morgen Richmond, who used the Wayback Machine to peruse the old Healthreform.gov FAQ about ObamaCare from June 2010. After NBC’s scoop last night that the White House knew three years ago that ObamaCare would force the withdrawal of millions of insurance plans, Morgen took a look back at promises made — and found estimates that should have warned people all along that the President’s promise was worthless.

For instance, here’s the first Q&A on the site from June 18, 2010:

Q: What effect will the new rule have on my health coverage?

A: The new rule will allow you to keep your current coverage if you like it and still benefit from many of the new consumer protections in the Affordable Care Act, such as a ban on your insurance being terminated just because you get sick and had made an unintentional mistake on your forms.

If your current plan significantly reduces your benefits or increases your out-of-pocket spending above what it was when the new law was enacted, then your plan will lose its “grandfather” status and you will gain additional new benefits under the Act. In the individual market, people change plans more frequently than those insured through employer plans. As such, most of the 17 million people who purchase in the individual market will likely gain all the new protections in the Affordable Care Act in the near term. [emphasis mine]

“Likely gain all the new protections” means that their plans will change, and that the grandfathering won’t actually protect anyone. Grandfathering, as you’ll read later from an insurance broker, requires plans to remain static, both in coverage and in membership. As Morgen noted, this didn’t just impact the “bare bones” plans, but nearly all of the plans in the individual market, as the HHS site predicted:

Many in the media are propagating the falsehood that only "bare bones" insurance plans are being canceled. Simply not true.

Also, the White House would shortly decide to rewrite the grandfathering regulation to make this false. Five days later, the White House itself claimed that it was protecting that feature and keeping Obama’s promise:

Another important step we’ve taken is to fulfill President Obama’s promise that “if you like your health plan, you can keep it.” Last week, Secretary Sebelius and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis announced a new rule that protects the ability of individuals and businesses to keep their current plan. It outlines conditions under which current plans can be ‘grandfathered’ into the system, minimizing market disruption and putting us all on the path toward the competitive, patient-centered market of the future. By providing the stability and flexibility that families and businesses need, Americans will be able to make the choices that work best for them.

One month later, as NBC reported, the Obama administration acted in exactly the opposite direction:

Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”

That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.

Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still saying in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”

Here’s a bigger whopper from that same FAQ:

Q: Will this new insurance regulation drive up my health insurance costs?

A: No. The grandfather rule is designed to preserve the ability of Americans to keep their current plan if they like it, while providing new benefits. Other provisions of the Affordable Care Act aim to make health insurance premiums more affordable. For example, the Act gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the authority to publicly post on the Web the proportion of premium dollars that an insurer spends on medical care as opposed to marketing or profits. If an insurer spends too much on salaries and other expenses not directly related to care, it will have to give its customers a rebate. The new law also helps states monitor and crack down on unreasonable premium increases by insurers. The Administration recently announced a new grant program to strengthen states’ ability to spot unreasonable premium increases and take action against them.

Actually, the “grandfathering” protection got negated when the plans changed, which means that most of the plans offered in the individual marketplace wouldn’t be grandfathered at all — which the White House well knew. What went into the “grandfathering” rule? An insurance broker who wishes to remain anonymous explained it to me in an e-mail, along with a description of how the ACA will hammer his personal finances:

To show you how this law ruins availability for both grandfathered and non (my plan is not grandfathered), I have (had) a plan that excludes maternity (had surgery to make sure that was a risk worth taking), excludes coverage for mental health and substance abuse treatment (self-insuring against an unlikely event) , does not provide dental coverage for my kids (again, managed with a savings account because most dental bills are not massive and unforeseen) and has a good network of local and specialty facilities, but it did not include the Mayo Clinic as an in-network facility.

My premium for a family of 5 this month is $743.50 (2 adults, 3 kids under 18). My insurance company chose to modify existing plans to meet the new ACA requirements as opposed to cancelling them, or you have the option to move to another plan that was designed around the ACA. Thanks to this bill, the plan I have now has to include maternity, has to include mental health/substance abuse coverage, and pediatric dental (which covers next to nothing until you meet your huge deductible. I also have to move to a network that includes the Mayo Clinic because my network is being eliminated.

Allowing my plan to continue with modifications is going to add over $421 a month to the premium, which is a 56% rate increase over this year. All because of services I don’t want and networks I can’t use.

So, to make it work, I’m being forced to raise my deductible from $3,000 per person to a shared family deductible of $10,400. Since it’s very unlikely we’ll have two people in the hospital in one year, my exposure is up by roughly double. My current plan also has 3 office visit co-pays and some prescription coverage for generics, which will all now have to go to deductible before coverage applies.

That brings my renewal down from $1,164 to $843, a 13.5% rate hike for a whole lot shittier coverage.

People need to start asking questions about the grandfathered plans too; they are exempt from meeting the new requirements, but they were also quarantined into their own risk pool. That means no new membership to refresh their overall health, and their premium pool just got significantly smaller. So if you like your plan, you can keep it if you’re independently wealthy. The new law will see fit to their rapid extinction.

Listening to everyone talk about the website and how lousy it is would be akin to talking about how this pill that’s going to destroy my internal organs is kind of hard to swallow.

Indeed. The aim all along was to wipe out almost all of the plans on the individual market for the one-size-fits-all approach favored by the central planners, and we’re all going to end up eating the cost for it in higher costs, federal entitlement spending, and reduced access.

‘Actually, ANY insurance that you currently have would be grandfathered in so you could keep it. So you could decide not to get in the exchange the better plan. I could keep my Acme Insurance, just a high deductible catastrophic plan. I would not be required to get the better one.’

Amazing so many of us that simply want economic reality to be a guiding principal of how to run the nation are vilified as racist, backwoods, homophobic, women hating morons because we can sniff out political lies like a bloodhound and call them out when we hear them.

Who cares if a bunch of crackers lose their coverage. ICE has been directed to not use Obamacare enrollment as a immigration status detection tool; now Ernesto can enroll for Medicaid through Obamacare. You racists should be happy to pay for 12 million new enrollees.

Will someone with contacts in the industry please check into how many of the employer-based plans not yet subject to regulation will also be affected? I’d be interested to learn if the individual market isn’t the only shoe to drop.

The same thing is going to happen in the group market when groups renew plans in 2014. The old plans will not be renewed because they do not comply with HCR and companies will have to pick more expensive plans than what they had in the past. No one seems to be talking about this YET. Many companies are renewing on 12/1/13 to kick the can down the road for 11 months. For those renewing on 1/1/14 and after, big sticker shock is coming and the reality that their old plan is gone if ti does not comply.

students expressed concerns “about cultural appropriation and the need to respect marginalized cultures.”

A halloween party with a bunch of idiots who worry about the need to respect marginalized cultures……. Yeah, that’s going to be a fun crowd to party with. I can easily see the monitors to ensure that the costumes are not offensive to “marginalized cultures.”

They smell blood in the water. And an implosion of Obamacare that would be professional Sepuku for them to ignore anymore (after three years of doing just that). Throw in that Europe is mad at us for spying on them, the Middle East in flames, the Benghazi lies finally being discussed by the MSM……….

Wonder who gets the WaPo’s worst week in Washington recognition this week.

If Hussein was so unhappy with the health insurance market and whatever they were doing ,
why didn’t he build up ( like from “ground up” as we say ) a new health insurance company which did everything he wanted ? Shouldn’t that have been easier? Then , if he had a good product, it would have sold and other people from other insureres would have flocked to it too, forcing other insurance companies to compete with his model.
Why TF did he have to break every existing and working thing ?
Unless his intent was malicious from the beginning ?

Commenters above are pointing out that this is not just about the individual insurance market. If the same rules are going to apply to all those on employer provided plans, then there are going to be a hell of a lot more than 17 million angry people in this country.

The question then will be how that anger gets directed. The rational thing would be to vote for those who want to undo the damage. But large groups of stupid people can’t really be counted on to do the rational thing. It’s going to be a battle to turn this nation away from single payer even when the crisis is caused by Obamacare.

did he have to break every existing and working thing ?
Unless his intent was malicious from the beginning ?

burrata on October 29, 2013 at 2:40 PM

Keep in mind there are two distinctly different things in play here. Health insurance and health care. The goal of Obamacare has always been to break the health insurance industry and use wealth redistribution to fund more free “stuff” through government “reform” of the health care industry.

The question then will be how that anger gets directed. The rational thing would be to vote for those who want to undo the damage. But large groups of stupid people can’t really be counted on to do the rational thing. It’s going to be a battle to turn this nation away fromtoward single payer even when the crisis is caused by Obamacare.

TexasDan on October 29, 2013 at 2:42 PM

Unless I have misinterpreted, I have fixed the original intent.

Yes, with Obama as President, the only option for the 2014 electorate will be to replace O-care with single payer.

That will be the MSM push and that is why everyone that thinks the MSM has suddenly been awakened are fools.

By the way, if you own a company or care about your company and your benefits and your costs, you need to inquire to make sure your agent has done an early renewal on your plan with an effective date of 12/1/13 or sooner. I am working on proposals for two clients today to get them taken care of before the end of the year. I can’t stop what is happening, but I can delay the impact by 11 months by doing this for my clients. It at least gives us a few months to figure out where to land. All plans must comply with HRC unless you have had the same plan with NO benefit changes since before the law was passed and your carrier is still active in your market. If your carrier pulled out like CCP did here in SC, you have lost your grandfather status.

Keep in mind there are two distinctly different things in play here. Health insurance and health care. The goal of Obamacare has always been to break the health insurance industry and use wealth redistribution to fund more free “stuff” through government “reform” of the health care industry.

Happy Nomad on October 29, 2013 at 2:45 PM

I think Hussein will drop these ” poor” people as soon as he has no more use for them, he is just humoring them for the time being because they are stupid .
Husseins have a track record in healthcare too , specially the Mooch . Afterall , she was the royal patient-dumper for Sh!^cago , and she brought her expertise to the job as the chief enforcer of jiziahCAIR.

– For several hours, the White House was successful in getting NBC to spike the biggest part of the story – that HHS immediately wrote the regulations to ensure that any significant change in the “grandfathered” individual insurance plans would result in the loss of the “grandfathering” and thus mass cancellations.

– HHS wrote said regulations specifically to eliminate the “grandfathering” of as many individual insurance plans as possible, and ultimately all of them.

I just can’t wait for Jugeared Jesus to get on prime-time TV to tell us how great this shizzle is and what a wonderful product it’ll turn out to be and how fricking hot shit it is that 26 year old bums are now allowed to sponge off of the rest of us and blah blah blah…